Why I Joined Pivotal Software

Cross-posted from my first blog published on LinkedIn…

Not only did I recently join Pivotal Software, I found my way into the swag closet…

I’m proud to announce that I have joined the marketing team at Pivotal Software.

There’s a special kind of excitement in helping build a business that you know can change the world. I’m excited to have a chance to work with the many talented people here at Pivotal, and be part of an amazing company and culture dedicated to helping customers create new innovations in big data.

Fun Analogies and Metaphors at Work

[SOURCE: (c) Byron Villegas, used according to Creative Commons License]

Marketers are very fond of analogies and metaphors, maybe overly fond. A good metaphor helps convey the emotion of a thought. A good analogy can help explain a complex idea.

Much to the amusement and sometimes annoyance of my coworkers, I’m always trying to think in terms of metaphors and analogies.

For you word geeks, you might enjoy this quick post about the differences between an analogy, a simile, and a metaphor: http://www2.hawaii.edu/~ailed/125/resources/metaphors_similies_analogies.pdf

My coworkers suggested that I start keeping a log of my metaphors and analogies I use in my projects. Maybe I should figure out a voting system for readers to help express which ones are spot on and which ones turn out to be really bad.

Crowd Funding – Good for Consumer Startups! Maybe Not for B2B?

There can be no doubt that crowd funding is a great opportunity for consumer-oriented startup companies, no matter whether they plan to stay small and local businesses or become overnight growth successes.  Kickstarter allows your company to launch inexpensively and prove demand for your product by taking preorders that generate cash. Not only does this bring funding with no cost to you in ownership, but it gives you additional leverage for when you might talk to traditional startup investors.

[SOURCE: Used according to Fair Use Doctrine]
The Pebble smart watch was just one of many super successful consumer product launches that generated significant pre-orders and fame.

Forget Products! Marketing Should Deliver Benefits Directly to Customers Instead!

My April Fools startup idea…

One of the growing trends coming out of the Silicon Valley start up frenzy is the concept of “Growth Hacking” where developers can “disrupt” the need to have a marketing department by essentially baking in awareness and demand generation as features of a product.

Add in elegant work from your product designers, and you essentially have no need for a marketing department at all since the products will position and message themselves, as well as create and follow up on leads simply through their use.

At first, marketers such as  myself were shocked – you mean companies will no longer need power point, logo design, or spam emails because the products can essentially market themselves??? Then we understood the actual reality: “Wow, developers are finally becoming aware of the market and their users!” At last, we can have the data we need about our customers and prospects usage of a product to do an effective job in the marketing department!

Then some enterprising marketers got together and thought, “Hmmm, how can we reduce expenses in R&D, speed up product cycles, and maybe turn marketing into a direct profit-center?”  Their solution: “Market2Benefit” the new “direct benefit to customer platform.”

Now companies no longer need a pesky unreliable product development process in order to deliver benefits to their customers. Market2Benefit is a multi-channel benefit application technology that allows end-customers to experience the benefits of using a product without having to actually use a product. The OEM simply decides what kinds of benefits they want their customer to enjoy, brands the experience accordingly, and deploys it to their customers.

By directly delivering benefits to customers, marketing departments can avoid the need of complicated product development and increase potential revenue.
[SOURCE: used according to creative commons license]

“Our goal is to help our customers get closer to their customers,” said Greg Chase, President of Market2Benefit. “Hopefully directly into the pleasure centers of their customers’ brains.”

Six Enterprise IT Buzzword Predictions for 2014

What new buzzwords will enterprise software marketers be adopting in 2014 to pollinate awareness and help our companies make honey?
[PHOTO SOURCE]  Used according to Creative Commons License.

Just for fun, I thought I’d share some predictions on the 2014 fate of popular 2013 buzzwords.

What Can Companies Expect from Crowd Funding and Crowd Sourcing?

[SOURCE] Crowds gathered in a Mall in UK.

Originally posted at SAPHANA.com.

Whenever new Internet-based business models are invented, some quickly create new kinds of companies – like Amazon, Google, Facebook and Twitter.  Others mature more slowly such as in the case of crowd funding and crowd sourcing. Crowd funding is finding funding for projects, products and companies from strangers on the Internet with companies such as Kickstarter, IndieGogo, and AngelList helping crowd funding mature. Crowd sourcing is sourcing work or creative ideas from strangers on the Internet with companies such as Amazon’s Mechanical Turk and 99 Designs successfully showing different models of crowd sourcing.  These concepts have been around since the beginning of Web 2.0, but enterprises are still trying to understand how these might fit into their existing businesses.

Having been involved with SAP’s first crowd sourcing programs, the SAP HANA Idea Incubator, and the SAP Idea Place, I’ve run firsthand into the many different expectations that people have about these concepts. Most understand some of the benefits they might receive, but not the corresponding duties they have to making their project a success. Similarly, I think involving a crowd has some far reaching benefits that only some have set up their campaigns to fully realize.

 

Marketing Through Example

Cross posted from my first blog at Medium:

While I was growing up, a popular TV commercial I remember was for The Hair Club for Men and featured their President, Sy Sperling, showing how he was both head of the company, and also a client:

Sy’s commercial exemplifies a powerful, yet surprisingly rare marketing approach where one shows your usage of the same product or service that you provide to customers. In this case, you become your own testimonial.

Are Marketers Liars?

On the list of “people you trust,” marketers (including those who do advertising and PR) tend to be on the low end. However, this annoyance with marketers often has to do with “spam” – interrupting your life with messages you don’t care about – rather than outright lies.

A marketer’s primary job is to generate awareness of and interest in a population of people for a product or service.
[SOURCE] © “meeshypants” used according to Creative Commons License

Why Promotion is Frequently Ignored in Marketing

There’s a song that I remember from my old Boy Scout Camp Songbook that we’d sing to the tune of Auld Lang Syne:

The fish, it never cackles ’bout

it’s million eggs or so,

The hen is quite a different bird,

one egg-and hear her crow.

The fish we spurn, but crown the hen,

which leads me to surmise:

Don’t hide your light, but blow your horn.

it pays to advertise.

Yet, for some reason, the promotional side of marketing tends to get ignored and maligned even by those in charge of marketing strategy. Maybe it’s because many of us were indoctrinated that humility is a virtue while pride was a vice. I think in many cases, people view promotion as an “expense” rather than an “investment” – throwing a party rather than building lasting business capability.

St. Humility transporting bricks to the monastery.
[SOURCE] Painting by Pietro Lorenzetti, work is public domain.

Marketers will be familiar with a common, “Build it and they will come” mentality that some product creators and business owners have. They think all it takes is yet another feature, or capability, and then we will get more customers.

Before the Social Media Marketing Settlers Arrived…

My first blog on this site, and one that still characterizes my approach to marketing – nurturing and building the community around your company or cause.

The Geek Marketing Blog

I am a marketer that engages in social media and blogging professionally. I figure the occasion of Social Media Week in San Francisco is as good a time as any to launch my own personal blog.

Let me start off with a rant that you might hear from your grandfather who had to walk to school in the snow, uphill both ways:

Back in the old days, before blogs were called blogs, before the term Web 2.0 had been coined, and back when social networking seemed useful only for illegally downloading copyrighted music, we called the precursor to social media “community building” or “community marketing”.

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